Welcome to the Monthly Skeptics Discussion thread. The goal of this thread is to promote critical discussion and challenge commonly promoted narratives through rigorous debate. It will be posted and stickied every Sunday. Due to the 2 post sticky limit, this thread will not be permanently stickied like the Daily Discussion thread. It may often be taken down to make room for important announcements or news.

Cryptocurrencies are a potential tool to evade economic sanctions for example against Russia, Iran, or Venezuela. In April 2018, Russian and Iranian economic representatives met to discuss how to bypass the global SWIFT system through decentralized blockchain technology.[56] Russia also secretly supported Venezuela with the creation of the petro (El Petro), a national cryptocurrency initiated by the Maduro government to obtain valuable oil revenues by circumventing US sanctions.

Bitcoins are mined with powerful computer hardware and software. A maximum of 21 million Bitcoin will be available, after which no further bitcoins will be produced. The algorithm which governs the production of Bitcoin limits the quantity that will be produced, and the rate at which they will be produced. It is a finite commodity – there is a fixed amount, and that ensures that greater demand will always prop up the price. In this way, it is similar to other finite commodities such as crude oil, silver, or gold.
‘’The limit you’re seeing is Coinbase’s daily limit being reached, not your personal limit. Sometimes the Coinbase site itself will run into a daily rolling limit on purchases or sales if there is an exceptional amount of activity in the bitcoin markets. We put up this temporary pause to make sure that we have enough funds to accommodate the transfer orders being created. This should be a rare exception rather than the general rule however. There is no specific time of the day where this limit starts – it’s on a 24 hour rolling basis. It might be best to check in at 6am or 7am Eastern Standard Time tomorrow. Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you – we know this can be frustrating. This is something we’re working on as we speak.’’

The domain name "bitcoin.org" was registered on 18 August 2008.[15] On 31 October 2008, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System[5] was posted to a cryptography mailing list.[16] Nakamoto implemented the bitcoin software as open-source code and released it in January 2009.[17][18][10] Nakamoto's identity remains unknown.[9]